A 7-year-old girl hugs a sailor assigned to the USS William P. Lawrence at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu on Aug. 28, 2024, after crew members of the ship rescued the girl and her mother from rough seas about 900 miles east of Hawaii. ()
FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii — French authorities have not been able to recover the body of a dead man left aboard a sailboat drifting near Hawaii that was the scene of a perilous rescue of a mother and her child by a U.S. Navy destroyer last week.
The master of the French-flagged sailboat Albroc died while the vessel was about 900 miles east of Honolulu, leaving a woman and small child stranded aboard.
Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point in Hawaii received a distress call in the early hours of Aug. 24 from the sailboat, the Navy said in an Aug. 29 news release. The Coast Guard launched an HC-130 Hercules plane, and upon reaching the scene crew members spotted the Albroc, a 47-foot sailboat.
It was then that the crew heard a mayday call on VHF-FM channel 16 from a 47-year-old woman aboard the vessel reporting that she and her 7-year-old daughter were in dire need of rescue, reporting that the master of the boat was dead.
The plane crew was unable to communicate directly with the woman.
Winds of roughly 20 mph were churning up waves of about six feet that were splashing over the side of the sailboat.
The Coast Guard requested further assistance from the Seri Emperor, a Singapore-flagged, 754-foot liquid petroleum gas tanker that was located about 290 miles south of the sailboat. The transit to the sailboat took about 18 hours.
At 9 a.m. on Aug. 25, another Coast Guard crew aboard a Hercules arrived on the scene and saw the mother and daughter waving their arms before they sought safety inside the boat’s cabin.
The U.S. Navy diverted the USS William P. Lawrence, a guided-missile destroyer homeported in Pearl Harbor, to the sailboat’s position.
The Seri Emperor arrived late in the afternoon on Aug. 25, but its crew was unable to safely transfer the woman and child from the vessel due to worsening weather ahead of the approaching Hurricane Gilma.
The tanker remained on the scene until early Aug. 26, when the Navy destroyer arrived.
“With seas greater than 25 feet forecast within 12 hours of their position and the damaged condition of the Albroc, the William P. Lawrence had a six-hour window to safely conduct small boat recovery operations,” the news release states.
A small boat crew from the Navy ship launched in 10-foot waves and rescued the woman, girl, a cat and tortoise from the sailboat.
They were unable to recover the body of the dead man aboard the boat.
Lea Goigoux, a spokeswoman for the French Consulate in San Francisco, said in an email Friday that French authorities have not yet been able to recover the boat or the boat master, who was not related to the passengers.
The Navy destroyer arrived at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu on Aug. 28, where members of the Coast Guard and the Honorary Consul of France in Hawaii provided care for the pair of survivors.
Neither required hospitalization, Goigoux said.
“I am extremely proud of the crew’s professionalism in planning and executing the safe recovery of two persons at sea on a disabled vessel in worsening conditions,” Cmdr. Bobby Wayland, commanding officer of the William P. Lawrence, said in the news release. “My boat crew — in particular the coxswain — demonstrated deft boat handling and good judgement in approaching the distressed vessel and transferring the survivors.”
